Obama's budget chief sees perils of a divided GOP

11:19 AM,
Aug. 1, 2013

Photo: Carolyn Kaster, AP

Written by

Susan Page
USA TODAY

The White House budget chief said today that divisions among Republicans are making it harder to negotiate a deal that would ease the impact of automatic budget cuts and avoid a government shutdown this fall.

"A challenge for us and a challenge for them," Sylvia Mathews Burwell, director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), said at a breakfast hosted by The Wall Street Journal. "Certainly it is much easier to think about negotiating and having deals when there is a singular represented point of view. That pretty much is a given."